“Amerikaner! Ja! Ja!” shrieked the merrymakers, “Freilich! We are all Americans. But what are you when you tell the truth to your good comrades? Amerikaner! Ha! Ha!—”
The cane of the first speaker beat a tattoo on the table and the mirth subsided. Plainly, he was a man of authority in the gathering.
“Now, then,” he cried, as though I were entitled by the rules of “the union” to enter two answers, “what country are you from?”
I repeated my first assertion.
“So you are an American, rheally?” he demanded, suddenly, in clear English, though with a marked accent.
A long reply in my own tongue upset his conviction that I should not be able to understand him. The others, however, grinned skeptically and fell to chattering again, glancing up from time to time to mutter, “Amerikaner! Ja, gewiss.” I scraped up a half-pipe of tobacco from the corners of a pocket, and fell asleep over the fumes.
A whining voice sounded in my ear:—“H’raus, Hop! Will mich einschliessen!” I opened my eyes to find the Jew bending over me. The room was nearly empty. Of the few “comrades” who remained one was the youth who had addressed me in English. I caught up my bundle and turned towards the door.
“Du bist, aber, ganz kaput?” demanded the young man, “have you no money?”
“No.”
He rose and followed after me.